


The Answer

by evergreen_on_the_horizon



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Broken Engagement, Champagne Problems, Engagement, F/M, Falling In Love, Friends to Lovers, I'm here to bring you feels in less than 1.2k words, Idiots in Love, Love, Love Confessions, Love Triangles, Marriage Proposal, Minor Aang/Katara, Minor Mai/Zuko, No-sided Mai/Zuko, Not Canon Compliant, One-sided Aang/Katara (Avatar), Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Realization, Romance, Taylor Swift has wrecked me 2020, True Love, Zutara endgame, but no infidelity this time I promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:28:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28043940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evergreen_on_the_horizon/pseuds/evergreen_on_the_horizon
Summary: Mai, Katara, and the moments where yes was not the answer. (And the moment where it was the only answer.)
Relationships: Aang/Katara (Avatar), Katara/Zuko (Avatar), Mai/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 131





	The Answer

**Author's Note:**

> I just really have a lot of feelings about evermore and Zutara and I can't be stopped, okay? Zutara ruined me a long time ago and Taylor Swift just keeps coming for me with this music and...
> 
> Just...please. Join me in my feels.

* * *

Sometimes you just don’t know the answer  
‘Til someone’s on their knees and asks you  
\- "champagne problems," Taylor Swift

* * *

The silence is unbearable.

Mai stands in the middle of the garden in her finest silk dress, chest constricting in panic, staring wordlessly at the ring in Zuko’s hand. It’s beautiful, rubies and onyx set into a fine gold band, and it bears the burden of its promise within its glittering depths. Zuko is on his knee in front of her, offering to fulfill the expectations set before them, to grant her everything that her parents and his father ever laid upon their shoulders.

He’ll do it. He really will. Mai knows it.

Zuko is duty and honor incarnate. He shoulders the weight of his crown will all the care and dedication his forefathers never had. He is good and he is just. And he will marry her.

That’s the problem.

“Well?” Zuko says.

In this moment, Mai realizes that she is not a dutiful, honorable daughter of the Fire Nation nobility. Her parents will put her on an express train to their relatives in Shu Jing and never speak to her again. And that’s okay, she thinks, because at least then she’ll stand a chance of finding what she’s looking for.

So will Zuko.

Together, Mai and Zuko are duty and honor. They are not love and trust. For years, they have clung to each other because duty and honor do not lead to broken hearts. Mai thinks she would like to get her heart broken a few times. She thinks that Zuko should stop hiding his own broken heart behind her skirts.

“No,” she says.

Zuko is on his feet faster than she can blink.

“Mai.”

She knows what he’s hiding from. Or rather  _ who _ . Zuko has always worn his heart on his sleeve. She knows about the star blossoms he keeps in his office. She’s seen the way he watches the moon. His eyes light up when he receives letters sealed with blue wax the way they’ve never lit up for her.

She saw them hug once, Zuko and the waterbender. That’s really when she’d known. The lingering, the desperation with which they’d held each other, the eye contact…

It hadn’t bothered her the way it should have. That’s when she’d figured out her own feelings on the matter.

“You don’t love me, Zuko,” Mai says. “And I don’t love you.”

“Mai,” he says again, reaching for her hand. “I care about you very much.”

“I know you do. And I care about you, too. That’s why I’m saying no. We both deserve more.”

Zuko swallows. His hand drops back to his side.

“Don’t give up on her,” Mai says.

And then she walks away. She feels lighter than she ever has her entire life.

* * *

It’s lovely. A panda lily etched into a shimmering yellow stone. The ribbon is a rich velvet in a shade of pumpkin orange. He must not know. He must have assumed. This isn’t what her people do. But the gesture, the meaning, is so heartfelt, so sweet.

He’s so earnest. He looks at her as though she stands on a pedestal, a goddess in a pantheon, responsible for hanging the moon and the sun in the sky. Katara has been expecting this for some time. She’s had her answer all planned out in her head. They live so placidly together, roaming the world incessantly and fulfilling his duties. There is really only one answer either of them can expect her to give.

Katara opens her mouth to say yes and in the liminal space before that word issues forth she thinks of someone else.

She thinks of fire lilies hidden in scrolls and delivered on the hands of unsuspecting staff members. She thinks of Water Tribe star blossoms left on her pillow, little glances of commiseration during council meetings, and shy, tentative kisses pressed to cheeks at midnight in the gardens.

She thinks of the words  _ I wish you wouldn’t go _ whispered in her ear. She thinks of how she broke their embrace and he watched her step towards what and who she thought was her destiny.

She thinks of red and black and eyes like autumn sunshine. The heated debates, the inside jokes, the innate understanding of  _ everything _ . It all lingers there in her mind, in her heart. He doesn’t look at her like she’s a goddess. He looks at her like she’s Katara and that’s  _ perfect _ . He’d never ask for more.

She thinks of everything her heart shouldn’t want and everything it does.

And when Katara opens her mouth to say yes, what comes out is  _ No. _

Aang stares at her, the wide, self-assured smile on his face melting slowly into shock and hurt. “Why?” he says, his voice hoarse.

“I’ve wasted your time, Aang,” Katara says. She’s trembling. Her heart is galloping at breakneck speeds in her chest and she steps back, steps away from him. “I’m so sorry.”

“Katara,” he says.

But she’s already running.

* * *

It takes her nearly two months to get to him. Storms and ships taking on water and  _ pirates _ . But Katara would fight a thousand man army on her own and slog through two months more if she had to because all of this is taking her to where she’s supposed to have been all these years.

The sun is setting when she breaches the gates of the palace and people are calling her name in shock as she flies past. She knows his schedule like the back of her hand. He never breaks from routine. The route she’s taking pounds under her feet, a blur on the wings of muscle memory and realization.

“Master Katara!” someone shouts.

“It’s okay!” Katara calls back. “I know where I’m going!”

And she does now.  _ She does _ .

He’s there in the garden, stripped of the trappings of the Fire Lord. He’s just  _ Zuko _ . A young man standing on a red bridge in a green, green garden, scattering crumbs for the turtleducks that swim and quack in the pond. He looks up when her footsteps fall over the gravel path, shock written across his handsome face.

She loves him.  _ La _ does she love him.

For a moment, she stands there, gasping for air and taking him in.

“I’m coming back,” she says and she can’t contain her smile.

“Katara,” Zuko replies, “we filled the ambassadorship a long time ago. I can’t give you your job back.”

With confident feet, Katara meets him on the bridge. “I’m not here for my job,” she says.

It takes him a long moment. He studies her face, his own thoughtful and nearly unreadable. She knows the moment he understands her words, though. The corner of his mouth quirks up and his eyes turn positively molten.

“Are you certain?” he asks.

And when Katara opens her mouth to answer, what comes out is  _ Yes _ .

**Author's Note:**

> ❤️💙


End file.
